


Palo Santo: Lyrical Purple

by Gammarad



Series: Writing Rainbow Works [3]
Category: Palo Santo - Years & Years (Music Video)
Genre: Android/human relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: Olly Alexander tries to understand the Showman, and maybe, after what feels like far too long, he's made some progress.





	Palo Santo: Lyrical Purple

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivine/gifts).

> Based on the film here: Based on the film here: [Years & Years - Palo Santo (Short Film) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfsndFf0PU8).

Olly had never been entirely sure what that android wanted from him. The Showman, the android who had found him and brought him to Palo Santo.

From the beginning, and he wasn't sure either whether that was something the android was doing on purpose, or whether the Showman was simply so different from a human that when his desires were complicated, they were also incomprehensible.

Most androids wanted something very simple. They wanted to be made to feel. They were able to get this by watching Olly and the other humans dance, listen to them sing, view the art they created. Though androids were perfectly able to dance and sing and do art for themselves, it was too perfect to hold emotion.

It was technique without life, the androids said. It lacked the _wabi-sabi_ of art created by human beings who were tired or ecstatic, who felt longing or satiety, whose irritations and tragedies affected their work in minute endless ways that brought it to trembling life for the androids who could not help noticing every one of those slight variances from perfection.

The audiences that watched Olly dance on stage in the galaxy glitter suit the Showman had chosen as his performance costume got what they wanted from him every night. 

It wasn't that Olly didn't appreciate that. He did. He enjoyed the adulation of the androids of Palo Santo. But every night since the first night, the Showman showered exaggerated praise on him, calling him perfect, miraculous and stunning. Had stripped him and examined him and seized Olly's wrist when he tried to touch in turn. 

He pursued the other human performers for a while. They had their own lives to lead, though. They wanted nothing from him that the humans back home in the South had not wanted. Ordinary human sex, ordinary human love. If that was all Olly had wanted, he would have stayed home.

So Olly had also tried pursuing other androids. He'd found a few who would fuck him, even let him spend the night in a room they were willing to pretend to sleep next to him in. But it was the one who had chosen him and brought him to Palo Santo who he was interested in, and who always seemed interested back, always seemed to want something from him, but he'd never found a way to offer it or been able to make the Showman tell him what it was.

"Let me touch you," he said one night after the performance. 

"Your performance has touched me," the Showman said.

"I can't feel it when my _performance_ touches you."

"I can't feel it when your hand touches me," the Showman said. "Tomorrow you will perform Sanctify with the others." He turned away.

He performed Sanctify by himself, he always had. It was If You're Over Me that he danced with his fellow human zoo specimens, the two that were almost as good at giving androids emotions through dance as he was. Karma and Ren who were jealous of him because the Showman didn't call them divine, amazing and incredible. Ren, the boy, had been attracted to Olly at first, they'd had a few good times. It hadn't ever been going to work, and now Karma and Ren might be starting a thing. 

One day, watching the androids when they turned their blind eyes to the sky to the moon as they did when the moon was exactly half or when it was full, he had an idea. He waited until the time had passed; the wait was longer than he had thought. 

Finally the Showman brought his gaze down from the moon to look into Olly's eyes. The intensity of his look was the same as ever, complete. He was never less than a hundred percent. "I can perform for you alone," Olly said. "Let me."

"Others need your gifts," the Showman said.

"It's not just about what others need." Olly's hands made fists at his side.

"Use that emotion in your performance." The Showman walked away. 

He could follow. Why not? Olly didn't try to be secretive about it. He simply walked after the Showman. To see where he was going; to be there with him when he arrived. "It's a new number," Olly said to the Showman's back. "You inspired it." He hummed a bit of the new song's melody. "Not ready to do it in front of everyone yet," he said.

"When have you ever been unready to perform in front of an audience?" The Showman didn't look back, but he still used human language, the one Olly spoke. The androids liked to speak their own way. They understood the human languages, all of them, of course. Their own mother, Queen android of the city, often made announcements in Olly's language since his arrival. 

He wondered sometimes if that was because she was a fan, too. She had never told him any other way, if she was.

"Well I'm unready now. Come on."

The Showman did not speak an answer, only walked on. He stopped when he reached a building that Olly had never been inside. The Showman entered the building and allowed Olly to follow him in. That was itself a kind of answer, of course.

He led Olly up to a large empty space with a proper dance floor. 

As he had the first night when the Showman looked him over and told him he was perfect, told him that whether he was a man or a woman did not matter, Olly stripped down to his underwear. Then he began to dance. He mouthed the words to the song he heard in his mind as he did so: this piece had its own music and lyrics that had been spinning in his head for days. 

"Dance like it's my first time," he sang silently as he threw his head back, then bowed to the floor, as his body shaped the meaning of the song, the music in his throat near-silent but well within the capabilities of the androids to hear. 

He spun, ducked, held still a breathless moment and then moved again, "Somebody like you that I could dance this to," and the dance went on.

The Showman did not move or speak. He took the dance in unblinkingly, as always. 

The finale, and Olly ended on his knees, neck arched, head thrown back, supporting himself on one arm, the other reaching toward his single audience member, his longing evident in the lineaments of his pose, the final words on his lips. "Singing hallelujah."

"Olly Alexander," said the Showman. 

Olly sat up, sitting on his heels. "That touched you. I know it did. You felt that."

The Showman nodded.

"Now it's my turn. You know how to make me feel, don't you?" 

"I know."

"Then do it."

"I am not made for that part of human relations."

"How would I know? You never took your clothes off for _me._"

The Showman nodded and began to remove his clothing. Olly knew in that moment he'd won.

...

At the half moon, at the full moon, the androids all stared at it as the hypnotic words of their mother washed over them. Nothing unusual happened, not that Olly or any of the other humans he'd spoken with in the city had figured out, anyway.

The new moon was different. The Reapers roamed at the new moon, collecting the androids whose time had ended. 

Olly didn't know what he'd do when they came for the Showman. He hoped it would be a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Olly's singing is from the same album as Palo Santo and the other two songs mentioned in the story, titled "Hallelujah." Unlike the other two songs, "Hallelujah" doesn't feature in the short film version of Years & Years:Palo Santo.


End file.
